Posted on 01/31/2002 4:17:10 AM PST by shuckmaster
The South has risen to challenge a Snohomish lawmaker.
In hundreds of e-mails and phone calls, Southerners and history buffs across the country reacted to a proposal last week by state Rep. Hans Dunshee to remove a road marker at the Peace Arch border crossing honoring Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president.
"My resolve has only increased," Dunshee said Wednesday.
The controversy surrounds a monument in Blaine designating old Highway 99, which runs through Snohomish County, as part of the transcontinental Jefferson Davis Highway. The United Daughters of the Confederacy erected the marker in 1940 with the support of state and Canadian officials.
Dunshee wants to pass a bill to rename the highway after William Stewart, a black man who fought for the North in the Civil War before moving to Snohomish. He also wants to get rid of the marker honoring Davis, whom he called "a guy who led the insurgency to perpetuate slavery and killed half a million Americans."
That comment is what most infuriated Southerners who heard about or saw The Herald's article about Dunshee's proposal.
"Amazing! Your Mr. Dunshee's ignorance of history is certainly letting itself be known," wrote John Salley of Belton, S.C., before launching into a history lesson.
"While I'm a believer in the traditional Southern view of states' rights, and believe that Mr. Dunshee has a right to move to change the name of the highway in his state," wrote Jeff Adams from Houston, "I don't think he should be so angry, intolerant and bigoted about it."
Some talked of boycotting Washington state if the marker is taken down.
Others said that if state officials change the highway's name, they should also change the state's name, because George Washington was one of the biggest slave owners of his time.
And still others accused Dunshee of trying to revise history, George Orwell-style.
Dunshee's reaction seems "outrageous" to Southerners because Davis is widely revered in the South, said Dave Gass, an art director for a magazine in Atlanta.
"Jefferson Davis' birthday is a legal holiday in seven Southern states," Gass said. "That's why I was so shocked to read this fellow (Dunshee) going on about how horrible he was, when Jefferson Davis was really a great man.
"Mr. Davis had a whole career before the war started and did things that benefited the entire country from coast to coast," Gass added. "He definitely deserves to be memorialized."
Suzanne Silek, president general of the 20,000-member United Daughters of the Confederacy, said there was good reason to erect the marker here. Davis built forts in Washington and helped get roads and railways built to reach them when he served as secretary of war under President Franklin Pierce, Silek said from the group's headquarters in Richmond, Va., where Davis is buried.
"The members who were active then did the historical research and found out that Mr. Davis was instrumental in developing the roads and highways in Washington state," Silek said. "And that's why they felt that Washington needed a highway named after Jefferson Davis."
The organization used to have six Washington chapters, although there's only one left now, with 32 members.
United Daughters of the Confederacy, which originated the highway naming in 1913, placed the markers for the patchwork road, which started in Virginia at the Potomac River and goes all the way to California, then up the coast, Silek said. The Blaine marker is the last one.
The local United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter plans to fight to keep the memorial standing, Silek said. She also said she'll ask Vancouver city officials to put back their marker in a city park marking the other end of the highway in Washington. It was quietly removed four years ago by a city council members who expressed concerns similar to Dunshee's.
The Daughters of the Confederacy can expect help from the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, said Ken Richmond of Sequim, leader of the group's state chapter. He said his group would support them in their quest to keep the markers up "because of the heritage issues involved."
A Western Washington University history professor said he isn't opposed to taking down the memorial, as long as it's not done solely over the slavery issue.
"If we take away memorials to people who owned slaves, we'd have to change the name of the state of Washington," said Alan Gallay, who teaches Southern history. Gallay used to teach history in Davis' home state of Mississippi, and his third book about the South is due out next week.
The proposal has stirred debate over the causes of the Civil War.
Dunshee is a history buff who can quote Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and insists that slavery was the real reason the war was fought. Others loudly disagree.
"To say that the war between the states was fought over slavery is like saying the American Revolution was fought over tea," Gass said.
The plan also highlights the deep North-South divide that still separates this country.
"It just seems that more often than not, Southerners are maligned for no particular reason," said William Wells of New Orleans, where Davis died in 1889.
Wells and others threatened -- some in jest -- to boycott Washington if Dunshee's bill gets through the Legislature.
"If Dunshee and his cohorts attempt to remove the marker, another will go up in its place," wrote Steven Moshlak of Longmont, Colo. And if the Legislature changes the name of the highway, "it will be a dark day before I, or others, will ever visit Washington state."
Hero or villain?
Dead for 113 years, Jefferson Davis still inspires Civil War-era feelings of reverence in the South and hatred in the North.
He was the first and only president of the Confederate United States. But he's often wrongly held up as a symbol of a pro-slavery resistance that led to war.
A U.S. senator from Mississippi, Davis tried to keep the Union together. He joined the Confederacy only when his state seceded. He sent a peace commission to Washington, D.C., after his inauguration, but Abraham Lincoln refused it.
Davis was born in Kentucky in 1808, just eight months before Lincoln and 100 miles away.
Davis was captured by federal troops in 1865 and jailed for two years. He was indicted for treason, but his case was dropped.
We had a lot of trade with Mexico did we? Enough to justify a rail link? Of course not, and our transcontinental railroads all ran east-west, not north south for that very reason. There wasn't enough trade with Mexico and there sure weren't many Mexican railroads to tie in to. No railroads ran the length of Mexico to tranship goods from Central America so you were back to ships for that transportation as well. Trade with those regions, such as it was, would have remained pretty much undisturbed. As for the 'southern produced light industrial goods', well there weren't any.
"War of Northern Dominance", eh? That's a new one. Never heard Jeff Davis's War called that before. But, I digress. I don't think that a southern victory would have prevented WWI, it probably meant that the North and South probably would have fought on opposite sides. A southern victory would have left hard feelings and an armed border between the two countries. If the confederacy cozied up to Great Britain then it's possible that the U.S. would have looked for allies among the other European powers, Germany or Russia. Squabbles between the European powers, like the Franco-Prussian War could have spilled over into North America. Instead of preventing WWI, a southern victory might have brought it about sooner.
Gosh, old Honest Abe is so eloquent it almost brings tears to my eyes.
Lincoln is talking about a revolutionary right.
There is no right to unilateral state secession under U.S. law. In the Prize Cases in 1862, the Supreme Court said that the actions of the "so-called confederate states" (to use their words) were rebellion and that the federal government was empowered to put down the rebellion. This was a -unanimous- decision.
Walt
Under any reading of the tenth amdndment where the states retain a right to rend the union, the people retain the right to maintain it. That is what they have done.
Secondly, the Congress is empowered to provide for the common defence and general welfare. No state may leave the union if it diminishes the general welfare. And the Congress is empowered by the necessary and proper clause to act if the general welfare is threatened. This too, is exactly what happened.
Thirdly, the supremacy clause of the Constitution prohibits secession.
If a state could unilaterally withdraw from the Union, then supremacy would rest with each state, respectively - not with the Constitution and the laws made pursuant to it. As the Constituion expressly declares the Constitution to be the Supreme Law of the land, any act that denies this supremacy (e.g., unilateral withdrawl) must be unconstitutional.
Walt
Not a problem; it is especially refreshing after bashing through the crap that appears on these confederate apolgist threads.
Walt
"Of course I don't know the thought processes of the NINE justices who ruled that the actions of the so-called seceded states were in fact rebellion against the lawful government. But they may have included something like this:
If a state could unilaterally withdraw from the Union, then supremacy would rest with each state, respectively - not with the Constitution and the laws made pursuant to it. As the Constituion expressly declares the Constitution to be the Supreme Law of the land, any act that denies this supremacy (e.g., unilateral withdrawl) must be unconstitutional."
Walt
Well, Walt, at least you are recycling your garbage.
I'm SO SICK OF this PC crapola.
There wasn't enough trade with Mexico and there sure weren't many Mexican railroads to tie in to. No railroads ran the length of Mexico to tranship goods from Central America so you were back to ships for that transportation as well.
And much of the South was 5-foot gauge, and the Central American ICRA routes that came later were 3-foot narrow gauge [as that of FEGUA in Guatamela still largely is.] But development comes with time, and ton-miles pay for route upgrades and expansion.
Trade with those regions, such as it was, would have remained pretty much undisturbed. As for the 'southern produced light industrial goods', well there weren't any.
They'd have developed, but likely not on the far reaches of the Dixie States, but in its heartland. The transportation network would have been necessary for delivery of both raw materials to and finished output from such industry as it grew, or it wouldn't have grown. But speculation on what might industry might have evolved in Dixie had the war been a southern victory, or more likely, a stalemate based on the suppression of such industry by Northern industrial interests after the war is specious. It is interesting though, to note where the Wright Brothers first flights took place, and to wonder if that might have become a southern aviation center to rival the present-day aviation centers at Ft Rucker, Alabama, Cape Canaveral, Florida and Houston, Texas.
"War of Northern Dominance", eh? That's a new one. Never heard Jeff Davis's War called that before. But, I digress.
Because you know the terms applied by the Yankee victors. It seems likely that a different outcome would have left the conflict known by differing names, North and South. But *War of Yankee Agression* is heard pretty commonly in the South today, sometimes tongue-in-cheek- and sometimes not.
I don't think that a southern victory would have prevented WWI, it probably meant that the North and South probably would have fought on opposite sides. A southern victory would have left hard feelings and an armed border between the two countries. If the confederacy cozied up to Great Britain then it's possible that the U.S. would have looked for allies among the other European powers, Germany or Russia. Squabbles between the European powers, like the Franco-Prussian War could have spilled over into North America. Instead of preventing WWI, a southern victory might have brought it about sooner.
Could be; the possibilities are near-infinite. But it's to be hoped that had such a thing occurred, Lincoln might have survived. Defeated in war, his political future would have been dim, but he might have reemerged as a political figure hoping to bring about reconciliation, if he were not impeached, at least in a few of the border states. And the Union would have regained the loss of a few colonies, er, states with the addition of those in the west choosing to go with the industrial north and those east-west links you mentioned- why, they might not have even have lost any stars from the flag at all.
As for the later wars and events, Churchill is a likely better historian than I; [though I have to wonder if he was familiar with Cleburne's letter] and so his account that is the one that matters, not your speculation nor mine:
IF LEE HAD NOT WON THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG
Winston Churchill Journal: Finest Hour 103
"If Lee after his triumphal entry into Washington had merely been the soldier, his achievements would have ended on the battlefield. It was his august declaration... that opened the high roads along which we are now marching so prosperously."
by Winston S. Churchill
THE quaint conceit of imagining what would have happened if some important or unimportant event had settled itself differently has become so fashionable that I am encouraged to enter upon an absurd speculation. What would have happened if Lee had not won the Battle of Gettysburg?
Once a great victory is won it dominates not only the future but the past. All the chains of consequence clink out as if they never could stop. The hopes that were shattered, the passions that were quelled, the sacrifices that were ineffectual are all swept out of the land of reality. Still it may amuse an idle hour, and perhaps serve as a corrective to undue complacency, if at this moment in the twentieth century‹so rich in assurance and prosperity, so calm and buoyant‹we meditate for a spell upon the debt we owe to those Confederate soldiers who by a deathless feat of arms broke the Union front at Gettysburg and laid open a fair future to the world.
It always amuses historians and philosophers to pick out the tiny things, the sharp agate points, on which the ponderous balance of destiny turns; and certainly the details of the famous Confederate victory of Gettysburg furnish a fertile theme. There can be at this date no conceivable doubt that Pickett's charge would have been defeated if Stuart with his encircling cavalry had not arrived in the rear of the Union position at the supreme moment. Stuart might have been arrested in his decisive swoop if any one of twenty commonplace incidents had occurred. If, for instance, General Meade had organized his lines of communication with posts for defence against raids,or if he had used his cavalry to scout upon his flanks, he would have received a timely warning. If General Warren had only thought of sending a battalion to hold Little Round Top the rapid advance of the masses of Confederate cavalry must have been detected. If only President Davis's letter to General Lee, captured by Captain Dahlgren, revealing the Confederacy plans had reached Meade a few hours earlier, he might have escaped Lee's clutches.
Anything, we repeat, might have prevented Lee's magnificent combinations from synchronizing and, if so, Pickett's repulse was sure. Gettysburg would have been a great Northern victory. It might have well been a final victory. Lee might, indeed, have made a successful retreat from the field. The Confederacy, with its skilful generals and fierce armies, might have another year, or even two, but once defeated decisively at Gettysburg, its doom was inevitable. The fall of Vicksburg, which happened only two days after Lee's immortal triumph, would in itself by opening the Mississippi to the river fleets of the Union, have cut the Secessionist States almost in half. Without wishing to dogmatize, we feel we are on solid ground in saying that the Southern States could not have survived the loss of a great battle in Pennsylvania and the almost simultaneous bursting open of the Mississippi.
However, all went well. Once again by the narrowest of margins the compulsive pinch of military genius and soldierly valor produced a perfect result. The panic which engulfed the whole left of Meade's massive army has never been made a reproach against the Yankee troops. Everyone knows they were stout fellows. But defeat is defeat, and rout is ruin. Three days only were required after the cannon at Gettysburg had ceased to thunder before General Lee fixed his headquarters in Washington. We need not here dwell upon the ludicrous features of the hurried flight to New York of all the politicians, place hunters, contractors, sentimentalists and their retinues, which was so successfully accomplished. It is more agreeable to remember how Lincoln, 'greatly falling with a falling State,' preserved the poise and dignity of a nation. Never did his rugged yet sublime common sense render a finer service to his countrymen. He was never greater than in the hour of fatal defeat.
But, of course, there is no doubt whatever that the mere military victory which Lee gained at Gettysburg would not by itself have altered the history of the world. The loss of Washington would not have affected the immense numerical preponderance of the Union States. The advanced situation of their capital and its fall would have exposed them to a grave injury, would no doubt have considerably prolonged the war; but standing by itself this military episode, dazzling though it may be, could not have prevented the ultimate victory of the North. It is in the political sphere that we have to look to find the explanation of the triumphs begun upon the battlefield.
Curiously enough, Lee furnishes an almost unique example of a regular and professional soldier who achieved the highest excellence both as a general and as a statesman. His ascendancy throughout the Confederate States on the morrow of his Gettysburg victory threw Jefferson Davis and his civil government irresistibly, indeed almost unconsciously, into the shade. The beloved and victorious commander, arriving in the capital of his mighty antagonists, found there the title deeds which enabled him to pronounce the grand decrees of peace. Thus it happened that the guns of Gettysburg fired virtually the last shots in the American Civil War.
The movement of events then shifted to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. England - the name by which the British Empire was then commonly described - had been riven morally in twain by the drama of the American struggle. We have always admired the steadfastness with which the Lancashire cotton operatives, though starved of cotton by the Northern blockade [our most prosperous county reduced to penury, almost become dependent upon the charity of the rest of England] nevertheless adhered to the Northern cause. The British working classes on the whole judged the quarrel through the eyes of Disraeli and rested solidly upon the side of the abolition of slavery. Indeed, all Mr. Gladstone's democratic flair and noble eloquence would have failed, even upon the then restricted franchise, to carry England into the Confederate camp as a measure of policy. If Lee after his triumphal entry into Washington had merely been the soldier, his achievements would have ended on the battlefield. It was his august declaration that the victorious Confederacy would pursue no policy towards the African negroes, which was not in harmony with the moral conceptions of Western Europe, that opened the high roads along which we are now marching so prosperously.
But even this famous gesture might have failed if it had not been caught up and implemented by the practical genius and trained parliamentary aptitudes of Gladstone. There is practically no doubt at this stage that the basic principle upon which the colour question in the Southern States of America has been so happily settled owed its origin mainly to Gladstonian ingenuity and to the long statecraft of Britain in dealing with alien and more primitive populations. There was not only the need to declare the new fundamental relationship between master and servant, but the creation for the liberated slaves of institutions suited to their own cultural development and capable of affording them a different yet honourable status in a commonwealth, destined eventually to become almost world-wide.
Let us only think what would have happened supposing the liberation of the slaves had been followed by some idiotic assertion of racial equality, and even by attempts to graft white democratic institutions upon the simple, docile, gifted African race belonging to a much earlier chapter in human history. We might have seen the whole of the Southern States invaded by gangs of carpet-bagging politicians exploiting the ignorant and untutored coloured vote against the white inhabitants and bringing the time-honoured forms of parliamentary government into unmerited disrepute. We might have seen the sorry farce of black legislatures attempting to govern their former masters. Upon the rebound from this there must inevitably have been a strong reassertion of local white supremacy. By one device or another the franchises accorded to the negroes would have been taken from them. The constitutional principles of the Republic would have been proclaimed, only to be evaded or subverted; and many a warm-hearted philanthropist would have found his sojourn in the South no better than 'A Fool's Errand'.
But we must return to our main theme and to the procession of tremendous events which followed the Northern defeat at Gettysburg and the surrender of Washington. Lee's declaration abolishing slavery coupled as it was with inflexible resolve to secede from the American Union, opened the way for British intervention.
Within a month the formal treaty of alliance between the British Empire and the Confederacy had been signed. The terms of this alliance, being both offensive and defensive, revolutionized the military and naval situation. The Northern blockade could not be maintained even for a day in the face of the immense naval power of Britain. The opening of the Southern ports released the pent-up cotton, restored the finances and replenished the arsenals of the Confederacy. The Northern forces at New Orleans were themselves immediately cut off and forced to capitulate. There could be no doubt of the power of the new allies to clear the Mississippi of Northern vessels throughout the whole of its course through the Confederate States. The prospect of a considerable British army embarking for Canada threatened the Union with a new military front.
But none of these formidable events in the sphere of arms and material force would have daunted the resolution of President Lincoln, or weakened the fidelity of the Northern States and armies. It was Lee's declaration abolishing slavery which by a single master-stroke gained the Confederacy an all-powerful ally and spread a moral paralysis far and wide through the ranks of their enemies. The North were waging war against Secession, but as the struggle had proceeded, the moral issue of slavery had first sustained and then dominated the political quarrel. Now that the moral issue was withdrawn, now that the noble cause which inspired the Union armies and the Governments behind them was gained, there was nothing left but a war of reconquest to be waged under circumstances infinitely more difficult and anxious than those which had already led to so much disappointment defeat. Here was the South victorious, reinvigorated, reinforced, offering of her own free will to make a more complete abolition of the servile status the American continent than even Lincoln had himself seen fit to demand. Was the war to continue against what soon must be heavy odds merely to assert the domination of one set of English-speaking people over another; was blood to flow indefinitely in an ever-broadening stream to gratify national pride or martial revenge ?
It was this deprivation of the moral issue which undermined the obduracy of the Northern States. Lincoln no longer rejected the Southern appeal for independence. "If," he declared in his famous speech in Madison Square Gardens in New York, "our brothers in the South are willing faithfully to cleanse this continent of negro slavery, and if they will dwell beside us in neighbourly goodwill as an independent but friendly nation, it would not be right to prolong the slaughter on the question of sovereignty alone."
Thus peace came more swiftly than war had come. The Treaty of Harper's Ferry, which was signed between the Union and Confederate States on 6 September 1863, embodied the two, fundamental propositions: that the South was independent, and the slaves were free. If the spirit of old John Brown had revisited the battle-scarred township which had been the scene of his life and death, it would have seen his cause victorious, but at a cost to the United States terrible indeed.
Apart from the loss of blood and treasure, the American Union was riven in twain. Henceforth there would be two Americas in the same northern continent. One of them would have renewed in a modern and embattled form its old ties of kinship and affiliation with the Mother Country across the ocean. It was evident, though peace might be signed and soldiers furl their flags, profound antagonisms, social, economic and military, underlay the life of the English-speaking world. Still slavery was abolished. As John Bright said, "At last after the smoke of the battlefield has cleared away, the horrid shape which had cast its shadow over the whole continent, had vanished and was gone for ever."
At this date when all seems so simple and clear, one has hardly the patience to chronicle the bitter and lamentable developments which occupied the two succeeding generations. But we may turn aside in our speculation to note how strangely the careers of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli would have been altered if Lee had not won the Battle of Gettysburg.....
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TO ENJOY THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE, AND THE SPLENDID PAINTING THAT ACCOMPANIES IT, join the Churchill Center and Societies now and receive FINEST HOUR #103. Just download a membership application on the Home Page of this website.------
Reprinted by permission from The Great Republic: A History of America, by Sir Winston Churchill, edited and arranged by Winston S. Churchill, soon to be published by Random House. The essay first appeared in Scribner's Magazine, December, 1930; it was first published in book form in If it had Happened Otherwise, edited by J. C. Squire (London: Longmans Green 1931), and reprinted in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, Vol. IV "Churchill at Large"
(London: Library of Imperial History, 1976).
Walt
Well, Walt, at least you are recycling your garbage.
And your answer to this premise regarding the supremacy clause is........?
Walt
Proverbs 26: 4
But I do like the part about the Constitution declaring itself the supreme law of the land.
>> Gosh, old Honest Abe is so eloquent it almost brings tears to my eyes.
> Lincoln is talking about a revolutionary right.
> There is no right to unilateral state secession under U.S. law.
OK, I understand now. It's acceptable to gain your independence by outright war and bloodshed, but unacceptable to do it by the peaceful consent of the people.
The -people- funded and raised armies and put down the unwarranted rebellion againt the national authority.
This interpretation has no serious challenge.
Walt
Proverbs 26: 4
All well and good, but not the law of the land; the Constitution is.
Walt
Proverbs 26: 4
Thanks.
And I will commend you to Matthew 7: 21-23.
Walt
I long ago gave up any hope of entering the kingdom of heaven, regardless of whether there is such a place or not.
Actually what it means is that any law - federal or state - that is contradictory to the Constitution is null and void. Which leaves you again looking at amendments 9 & 10.
"If a state could unilaterally withdraw from the Union, then supremacy would rest with each state, respectively - not with the Constitution and the laws made pursuant to it. As the Constituion expressly declares the Constitution to be the Supreme Law of the land, any act that denies this supremacy (e.g., unilateral withdrawl) must be unconstitutional."
Gee Wally Walt, are you a supreme court justice now too?
"...and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate."
US Constitution, Article V.
Nothing in there about forcing a state to be represented - in fact it states exactly the opposite. A state, if it so desires, can divest itself of representation. And the obverse is true, a state can't be forced to participate.
"[I]t is especially refreshing after bashing through the crap that appears on these confederate apolgist [sic] threads."
And you're the one spreading the manure.
Not according to James Madison:
"But if the powers be attributes of sovereignty & nationality & the grant of them be perpetual, as is necessarily implied, where not otherwise expressed, sovereignty & nationality are effectually transferred by it, and the dispute about the name, is but a battle of words. The practical result is not indeed left to argument or inference. The words of the Constitution are explicit that the Constitution & laws of the U. S. shall be supreme over the Constitution and laws of the several States; supreme in their exposition and execution as well as in their authority. Without a supremacy in those respects it would be like a scabbard in the hands of a soldier without a sword in it. The imagination itself is startled at the idea of twenty four independent expounders of a rule that cannot exist, but in a meaning and operation, the same for all."
The Supremacy Clause forbids a state to leave. Their laws and ordnances may NOT be supreme over those of the United States.
Don't forget that the power to act for the common defence and general welfare are assigned to the Congress. The 9th and 10th amendments cannot reserve a power to the states that would be inimical to the common defense and general welfare. This is just another manifestation of how reliance on the 9th and 10th amendments will not prove a right to secession.
There is no right to legal unilateral secession under U.S. law and no amount of bleating will bring one about.
Walt
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